


Dinner Dynamics

by Frozzy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Feels, Humor, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Romance, witty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frozzy/pseuds/Frozzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Scott caught Furry and became a working exemplar of the supernatural, Stiles has had to reevaluate most truths in his life. Where he used to think that his dad was the Moaning Myrtle of grocery shopping, he now knows that Derek is worse. Much worse. Cataclysmically worse, even. And this is the opinion of the new and improved Stiles, who swore to his good Stilinski self that after he turned twenty, he would take a more relaxed approach to life. Self-preservation is his new adult motto. Of course, that motto needs some work around Derek, but that's only natural, really... Really?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner Dynamics

**Author's Note:**

> This grew a life of its own. It also grew a sister. And a family. Possibly even a house to put these people in. I have absolutely no idea how this ended up being so long and so intricate. Also, this is both the first Teen Wolf fic I’ve ever written, and it’s the first m/m couple I’ve ever written. Still, I am in no way unfamiliar with the concept. When you stay in fanfiction for 10 years plus, you end up in the outermost corners of it. Happily, mind you. Anyway, I just wanted to have some fun with this, so there isn’t really a big plot or anything. But, this being a new fandom for me to write in, I enjoying working with my characterization of so many new and different people from what I’m used to. Also, I'm not sure about the rating, but it may also change if I decide to add more onto this piece.
> 
> Enjoy and leave words of criticism/praise if the mood strikes you!
> 
> And again, this is my first Teen Wolf fic and my first m/m couple fic ever, but hopefully I'm an adept enough writer to present it convincingly ;)

Since Scott caught Furry and became a working exemplar of the supernatural, Stiles has had to reevaluate most truths in his life. Water is still wet and grass is still green, but where Stiles used to think that his dad was the Moaning Myrtle of grocery shopping, he now knows that Derek is worse. Much worse. Cataclysmically worse, even. And this is the opinion of the new and improved Stiles, who swore to his good Stilinski self that after he turned twenty, he would take a more relaxed approach to life, meaning an approach where he won’t poke his nose into places where he is better off not poking it, because self-preservation is his new motto.

“Stile-”

“Yes!” Stiles answers and jerks his head around. Derek looks at him, his mouth still halfway open. He closes his mouth and looks at Stiles’ hand where it hovers above their shopping cart.

“Unhand the Oreos,” he says.

Stiles looks down at his hand, and yes, he sees the Oreos. He doesn’t know how they got there, but he sees them. Sometimes his body does stuff that passes his brain by.

“They're crackers. Not a character from a Harlequin novel,” Stiles says and makes a motion as if to drop the Oreos into the cart. He doesn’t do it, though. He doesn’t quite dare.

“Cookies,” Derek says, and Stiles has to stop at that, because Derek said cookie.

“What?”

“America’s favorite cookie,” Derek says, quoting the Oreos slogan from where he reads it off the Oreos still in Stiles’ hand. “Not crackers like you said. Now unhand the cookies.”

“Man, alright,” Stiles says and stuffs the Oreos back onto the shelf. “I don’t remember grabbing them, anyway. Ease up on the brow of disapproval, dude.”

Derek doesn’t warrant that a reply. Since everybody in Beacon Hills has either superhuman strength, superhuman senses or superhuman psychic abilities, Stiles has patented ‘the last word’ for himself. It’s not superhuman, but Stiles really has no need to feel superhuman. He – and everybody else on this planet, he believes – has problems enough feeling merely human in the first place.

“Say, if Oreos had been written on Lydia’s grocery list, would you have bought them?” he asks Derek and bats his eyelashes to be extra obnoxious. When Derek doesn’t answer and pushes the cart along the aisle in silence, Stiles skids up in front of the cart and grabs it with both of his hands. With Stiles grabbing the cart, Derek has to stop. This leaves the two men at an impasse with Derek standing behind the cart and Stiles standing in front of it. Never mind that Derek can run Stiles over with the cart if he really wants to. Derek lowers his eyes from Stiles’ face to his hands, and Stiles briefly reconsiders if Derek would or wouldn’t run him over with the cart.

“They’re not on the list,” Derek says and answers Stiles’ question. At some point in the past, Derek accepted that silence doesn’t deter Stiles from getting his answers. Nowadays he gives in much faster to Stiles’ insistence than in the past. Stiles loves it.

“Yeah, but hypothetically-”

“They are not.”

“But hypothetically-”

“No,” Derek says. Stiles lets go of the cart with an exaggerated movement that was meant to instill a reaction in Derek, but Derek’s face doesn’t change. All right. At some point in the past, Derek also got used to Stiles excessive full body gestures, and they no longer surprise or irritate him. Stiles is not so much in love with that.

“If I smack you with one of those, will you promise not to dodge it with your superhuman speed?” Stiles asks and points to the spry lumps of celery stacked up along the knee-height produce aisles to their right. Derek’s mouth twitches in an aborted smile. Stiles sees the twitch, and he lets go of the cart. He trots up next to Derek and snatches the grocery list from the larger man’s hand. With a look down at the overfilled cart, he looks back at the list.

“All right,” he says and purses his lips with his eyes still on the list. “What’s the next item? Coffee? Soup? I don’t get why the girls put us on shopping duty. If they’re cooking, shouldn’t they buy the groceries, too?”

“They don’t have a car,” Derek says.

“Lydia has a car,” Stiles says.

“Do you remember last week?” Derek asks.

“In general? Or are you referring to something specific?” Stiles says and aims a charming smile at Derek. Derek shoots it down with an apathetic blink.

“When the herd of manticores passed through Beacon Hills and tried to gut Lydia and bathe in her intestines,” he says and the smile on Stiles’ face slips. He reaches up to scratch behind his ear. Okay, yeah, so he remembers that, but he had momentarily repressed the memory. He has had a lot of practice with that in his life, and old habits die hard.

“Right yeah, and it slashed her car in the process,” he says. “I remember. So, no car.”

“Good,” Derek says. “I was afraid you had lost your memory again.”

“Hey, none of those times were my fault,” Stiles says. “Mystical creatures love to suck on my brain. It’s like an aphrodisiac to them.”

“Nothing about you is an aphrodisiac, Stiles.”

“Ouch, Derek. Ouch,” Stiles says. He moves on before he says something stupider. “I still think the girls should be buying this stuff themselves. This reunion dinner was their idea. And they vouched for the homemade food, too. I would’ve gone with pizza.”

“Scott chimed in heavily on the homemade part,” Derek says.

“Kira’s a mean cook. Comes from daddy,” Stiles says. Derek nods and picks a can of cut pineapple from the shelf and topples it into the cart. Stiles is about to ask why they don’t buy it fresh, since Lydia is on her ecofriendly roll, but Derek speaks first and beats him to it.

“You just don’t like it, because you’re the guest of honor,” Derek says and pushes the cart around a corner without warning. Stiles has to speed up into a jog to follow the new route, but only because Derek gave no warning before he turned their ship around. Naturally.

“I’ve been here for a month, long enough to beat up that manticore herd, actually. The gesture doesn’t feel very genuine. There’s no reunion going on, really. We should hold a survival dinner instead, celebrating that we still have our lives intact. We’ve never held any of those, and I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve survived lethal odds,” Stiles says. He catches up with Derek and grabs the side of the shopping cart. “And since when do you offer to play host for domestic activities, anyway? Why are we having this ‘reunion dinner in Stiles’ honor’ at your house?”

Derek yanks at the cart, subtly, but Stiles’ hand stays put.

“Since I bought a house with a living room big enough to hold a bunch of werewolves, a kitsune and a banshee in it without alerting the authorities or any other supernatural creature in the vicinity,” he answers.

“Valid point,” Stiles says and lets go of the cart. Derek immediately speeds up his walk. Stiles matches his speed, but he doesn’t grab the cart again. Gradually their pace slows to a stroll. Derek checks the grocery list a last time.

“That’s it,” he says. “We’re done.”

Stiles looks into the cart. “You sure? How is this gonna make a meal? What are the girls making?”

“Something I can’t pronounce.”

Stiles looks into the cart a second time. “Something you can’t swallow, too, I bet.”

Stiles glances back up at Derek to see the older man’s lips split apart in a faint grin. Yeah. Of course Derek wouldn’t ignore Stiles’ unfortunate choice of words. Not this time and not ever.

“Oh, stuff it,” Stiles says. He realizes his blunder too late. “No. That’s not- dammit! Stop insinuating that I’m making sexual innuendos!”

“I’m doing that?” Derek asks.

“Your face is!”

“People are waiting for us at home. Walk now. It’s almost clear,” Derek says and swerves for the registers and the unenthusiastic employees behind them.

It has been like this ever since Stiles moved away from Beacon Hills to study in San Francisco. Whenever he returns home for a holiday or some other occasion, he will often find himself in the company of Derek. There is a reason for that, and the reason is that Derek doesn’t work for a living. The man is loaded from family heritage and wolf shenanigans. He has no responsibilities except for a dozen wolf negotiations and some annual full moon agendas. Scott has his responsibilities at the animal clinic, studying hard to become a certified veterinarian himself, and Lydia studies for her PhD in math, while Kira has her familial duties that extend far beyond anything Stiles can ever hope to understand, so he doesn’t even try. Malia works at the auto-shop downtown, and Liam is not that close a friend of Stiles’, so he doesn’t bother much with him.

So, there it is.

The only persons who have time for Stiles when he comes home for the holidays are his dad and Derek.

Needless to say, his relationship with Derek has matured because of this. They still deal with their antagonistic past that sometimes rears its head, but now they also share a lot of other stuff together. Pleasant stuff. Stuff like late afternoons spent in town looking for a new kitchen table, and the occasional popping of a good wine together with Stiles’ dad. No more running for your life down Beacon Hills’ streets, or frantic midnight research with Derek breathing down Stiles’ neck.

Stiles like Derek.

A lot.

And Derek knows it.

He knows, because there was that one time when Stiles got drunk at Derek’s loft, and he was unable to drive home, so Derek made him stay for the night. Stiles fell asleep on the couch, while Derek headed for the shower to wash away the day’s grime and dirt. When Derek came back into the living room fifteen minutes later, his footsteps on the floorboards roused Stiles from his drunken slumber on the couch. That or something else, but Stiles really can’t see what else could have woken him up except for Derek’s footfalls. Be that as it may, Stiles cracked his blurry eyes open and was rewarded with the sight of a shirtless Derek. Now, he had seen Derek shirtless on many occasions before, and he had even seen a post-shower shirtless Derek on many occasions before. But this time, this exact time, something clenched hard inside Stiles’ stomach, and he watched a few scant droplets of water trickle down Derek’s tightly packed chest and past the soft hair that fanned out above his leather belt. That was when Stiles opened his mouth and asked Derek to fuck him into the couch.

So.

Derek knows.

But they are past it!

Most times, anyway.

“Stiles?”

Stiles flinches when Derek’s voice splinters his thoughts for a second time that day.

“Sorry,” Stiles says. He resumes dumping their groceries onto the band that leads to the plump Mrs. Hathaway behind the register. Stiles shoots the middle-aged woman a smile, and when he glances at Derek standing a couple of steps away, Derek is staring at him strangely. Stiles shrugs and sniffs. Hey, a man can’t be faulted for reevaluating his past mistakes whenever the mood strikes him, can he?

And he can’t start thinking of Derek like this again.

Not again.

Outside the store, Stiles helps Derek stuff the trunk of his Camaro with the overload of groceries. Bag after bag they fill up the trunk. When they finish, Derek slams the trunk shut and they both get into the car. The ride back to Derek’s place is done mostly in companionable silence and the odd comment here and there. As he matured into an adult, Stiles’ brain also slowed down, and he no longer needs constant stimulation to keep his brain from imploding on itself. This means that silences no longer grate on him as badly as they used to do. They still grate on him, sure, but it’s of a more tolerable sort than when he was a teenager.

They park in Derek’s driveway fifteen minutes later. Derek’s house is a regular two-story gray house with a trimmed lawn and a birdhouse that came with the property. The second that Derek kills the Camaro’s engine, the front door of the house swings open and a horde of people hustle down the driveway. Derek is out of the car before anybody gets close enough to open the trunk without his supervision. Stiles sits back in the passenger seat for a while longer. He stares at the faces of his friends through the window of the Camaro. Mute sounds pass over their lips, and Stiles thinks that he’s more comfortable staying inside the car than joining the people outside. It’s a familiar thought and it passes his mind sluggishly. Then a hand slaps against the window directly in front of Stiles’ face, leaving a moist handprint behind, and Scott’s face pops up next to the handprint. Stiles smiles, goofy and wide, and he pops the door open and slips outside to Scott.

“Hey man, that trip took ages,” Scott says and grabs Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles juggles with Scott’s hand and moves in close to his friend’s face.

“Did you see the list that Lydia and Kira compiled, dude? No freaking wonder,” he says under his breath. He shoots a glance in Lydia’s direction to make sure that she hasn’t overheard him. Luckily, Lydia is preoccupied with the many plastic bags in the Camaro’s trunk. She wants to make sure that everything is there. Derek stands next to her, but he doesn’t interfere. Kira stands next to Derek. She looks as if she might interfere, but she follows Derek’s example and lets Lydia ride out her nature. Stiles silently applauds them.

Liam and Malia aren’t there to help with the groceries, but Stiles guesses that they are somewhere inside the house. It’s possible that they are chatting up his dad, since Lydia also invited the Sheriff for this particular dinner. It makes sense to invite him, Stiles has to admit, because his dad and Derek have struck up an odd sort of friendship over the past years.

Liam has a knack for politics, something that nobody saw coming, and he enjoys talking Beacon Hills politics with Stiles’ dad, who still holds down the Sheriff position in the Beacon Hills police force. It’s not that Stiles dislikes Liam, or that he’s jealous of Liam’s connection with Scott. Not anymore, anyway, but that’s the jam, isn’t it?

Malia, on the other hand, didn’t stay inside the house in order to chat with the Sheriff. Stiles knows his ex-girlfriend down to the marrow of her bones, and she simply can’t be bothered to help carry the groceries. He smiles ruefully at that. He has always liked her indifferent attitude, even if it stems primarily from her lack of social tact and understanding. It reminds him of Allison, who took shit from nobody. And Allison reminds him of Isaac. And this is a road that he doesn’t want to go down, so he better stop himself in good time.

He turns towards Scott.

“Is my dad here?” he asks.

“Yup,” Scott says. “He brought a couple packs of beer.”

“Miller or Bud?” Stiles asks, and his eyes flickers when Derek slams the trunk shut. The plastic bags are all divided between Derek and Kira alone, and Stiles ponders if he should offer his assistance, but they seem to have it under control. Also, Scott didn’t offer his assistance. He’ll blame it on Scott if anybody complains later. Lydia, of course, doesn’t carry any bags, because she delegates orders.

“Miller,” Scott says to Stiles.

The two of them make up the rear of the small group, as they walk up the driveway and into the garage of Derek’s first inhabitable home. Lydia leads the group in the front, swishing ahead with her ponytail moving like a pendulum, but Derek’s considerable back and shoulders obscure most of Stiles’ view of her. From the garage, the group enters the house, and Stiles feels his body loosen up.

“Dump the bags in the kitchen,” Lydia says to Kira and Derek.

“Naturally,” Derek says, but he manages to sound indifferent while he says it, so Lydia only shoots him a sharp glance, and he narrowly escapes a tongue lashing in all its glory. It’s Derek’s house, but Lydia always plays hostess, both in and out of her own home.

While Kira, Derek and Lydia aim for the kitchen, Stiles catches sight of his dad and Liam chatting inside the living room. He grabs Scott’s shoulder and guides them in that direction. Halfway there, however, they are intercepted by Malia, who swiftly rounds the corner of the hallway. She catches Stiles utterly by surprise. He sees but a whirl of brown hair and a recognizable scent of jasmine, and only barely escapes tackling her to the ground. That’s not really his credit to take, however, because Malia is the one who prevents a collision between the two of them, when she puts one foot in front of the other and swivels out of Stiles’ immediate range.

For a moment, they all stand very still.

Then Scott lets out a low whistle from behind Stiles.

“Close call,” he says with a smile and a dip of his head.

“Hurray for coyote reflexes,” Stiles says. He’s only minimally breathless. He had little time to realize what happened, after all, and never really got a chance to react to it. Malia raises a brow, a beautiful dark one that Stiles remembers the feel of, and Stiles smiles at her. She pats Stiles’ shoulder with a crooked smile and heads for the kitchen with her nose sniffing the air.

“Let’s try this again,” Stiles says to Scott, shaking his head once, and they both walk into the living room without another near disaster intercepting them. At this time of the day, the living room is brightly lit by the setting sun. It’s late afternoon on a Monday in October, and the sun hangs low on the horizon, casting golden colors into the house through the tall white-framed windows with their draped army green curtains. The sun reflects on the polished hardwood floor, and Stiles almost squints in the face of it.

“Hello, son,” Sheriff Stilinski greets Stiles from where he sits on the couch. He’s wearing jeans and a faded blue t-shirt. Casual stuff.

“Hey, dad,” Stiles says and plops down onto the couch next to his dad. His dad grabs the back of Stiles’ neck and squeezes it. It’s the universal gesture of dad love, and Stiles (together with every other son out there) knows it inherently. Liam sits in the armchair opposite of the couch with his legs folded up under him in a position that looks far too flexible for any guy. Scott crouches down onto the floor next to Liam. For some reason, Scott prefers sitting on floors rather than furniture. Stiles thinks it’s something about mobility and being able to move and act faster on the hard surface on a floor rather than the soft cushiony surface of a couch. It’s a protector thing, really. Scott has to protect his pack, and he does partly per habit and partly by instinct.

Stiles leans forward on the couch and grabs the last beer from the Miller six-pack that his dad brought.

“Easy there, kid,” the Sheriff says to his son with a lopsided smile on his face. “I know it’s not the best tasting beer in the world, but there’s no reason to chug it down in one gulp.”

Derek walks into the living room. He has a pinched look on his face, and the look says it all. He got kicked out of his kitchen, and he’s not happy about it. The Sheriff scoots closer to Stiles on the couch, beer safely in hand, and Derek snatches the third spot on the couch next to the Sheriff. This puts Stiles and Derek up against opposite armrests with the Sheriff sitting in between them.

It may be the beer that he just downed, or it may be the thoughts from earlier that still circulate his head, but when Derek sits down on the couch, the back of Stiles’ neck grows itchy and hot, and his pants tighten imperceptibly around his crotch. It happens quickly, like the starting spurt of a firecracker, and Stiles is somewhat dumbfounded by it.

Great.

He wasn’t supposed to think of Derek like this again.

Well, it was probably inevitable after that shopping trip.

The presence of his father really should put a halt to the development in Stiles’ pants, but apparently parental supervision is not enough to affect the party in Stiles’ pants. It’s been years since that fateful time in Derek’s loft, and he’s hung out with Derek many times after that, even just the two of them together, so why is this happening now?

Scott alerts Stiles with a wordless look in his direction that Stiles’ situation hasn’t gone unnoticed by the wolves in the room. Well, fuck, he’s used to that, and they can’t read his mind, anyway. They can only smell him. They can’t know the reason behind his smell. They can’t smell why. Thank god for small blessings.

As for whether Derek is even into guys?

Stiles has a hunch that says yes, but he has no technical proof.

Still, after all these years and all the shit that their ever evolving group has been through, Derek hoards his privacy like a dragon hoards its gold. Maybe it’s even because of all the shit that they’ve been through. Who knows?

While Stiles sits on the couch and thinks of very unsexy things, Liam brings the Sheriff into a discussion on the matter of homelessness in Beacon Hills. Scott listens with attentive eyes, and Derek interjects with a comment or two. After a couple of minutes, Stiles takes his chances. He stands up, praying that his unfortunate hard-on won’t be quite as unfortunate anymore, and leaves the room in search for the bathroom.

This is a thing of the past, the far past, so why is it resurfacing now? Yes, Stiles freely admits that he had a crush on Derek when he was younger, but that was then and this is now. He popped his obsession with Derek like a bad pimple years ago. Nowadays there is only a scar left where the pimple used to be. There can’t be a new pimple. Stiles can’t pop this one a second time. He won’t pop it a second time. The pain will be excruciating.

“What are you doing?” a voice says behind him.

Stiles looks over his shoulder and sees Derek. At the same time, he realizes that he stands frozen inside the hallway, only a couple of steps away from the living room that he just left, and that the bathroom is upstairs. He is not even within eyesight of his intended destination. Not even on the same floor level. He resists the urge to groan.

“Thinking about pimples,” he answers. It doesn’t make Derek pause like Stiles had kinda hoped that it would.

“What is wrong with you today?” Derek asks. “You’ve been weird since this morning.”

“Fuck if I know, man,” Stiles says. He doesn’t ask if Derek followed him out of the living room. He obviously did. Stiles also doesn’t ask why, because Derek will never tell him why, so it will be a waste of effort. Stiles knows better. They both do, and Derek confirms this with the words that he says next.

“You’re acting up again,” Derek says and he’s referring to the party in Stiles’ pants that now has died out, but which was alive and kicking moments before.

“Apparently so,” Stiles says. He wants to mumble the words, but Derek will hear them anyway, so he ends up speaking them clearly as if he’s commenting on the weather. Why beat around the bush, anyway?

“Why?” Derek asks him.

Derek’s body language is one of careful neutrality. For some reason, it irks Stiles. It irks him enough to make him turn around and walk deeper into the hallway. First he does it to get away from Derek, but when Derek follows him, he does it to pull their conversation away from the kitchen and the open arch of the living room. He can hear the puttering of pans inside the kitchen, and his dad’s voice inside the living room.

At the end of the hallway, Stiles turns the corner and leans up against the wall. Or sags. Whichever. There is a framed photograph of a smiling baby in a green Santa hat on the wall across from him. While Stiles studies the photograph, wondering if Derek put it up for shits and giggles or if he really is related to that baby, Derek turns the corner and blocks Stiles’ view of the photograph. Stiles grimaces when the baby’s face is replaced with Derek’s heavy brows and stubble.

“Oh God,” Stiles says and clutches his chest. “You just killed a baby.”

Derek ignores him.

“Why?” he asks Stiles again. And dammit. The man looks delectable up close in a shadowed hallway, wearing that dark maroon V-neck shirt with the laces in the front that Stiles has a serious fetish for.

“How would I know, Derek?” Stiles asks, and there is frustration in his voice now. He can’t believe he’s here again. “My body has its own rules that are very much beyond my meager understanding, but hell, it was probably that lame conversation we had back at the store. You know which one. You started it.”

“It’s my fault?” Derek asks and takes a step closer. Stiles’ shoulders tense up.

“Come on, it’s nobody’s fault,” he says, now discouraged rather than frustrated, and it sounds halfhearted even to his own ears. Of course he’s blaming Derek. He has to put the blame on somebody, and he can’t put it on himself. He knows that instinctively. He can’t put the blame on himself, because that will unwind something which has taken him a lot of time to wind up in the first place. He wishes for all of these thoughts to travel unhindered into Derek’s brain, perhaps through the deep look that they’re sharing right this moment, but he knows that’s only wishful thinking. Especially when Derek’s forehead scrunches up, and his hands curl into lax fists by his sides.

“Stiles,” Derek says, but he doesn’t say more. Maybe some of Stiles’ thoughts did travel unhindered into Derek’s brain?

And fuck.

Derek smells like pine, dirt and warm fur in front of the fireplace, and Stiles can feel the burn renew inside him. It pools in his groin and his fingertips turns tingly and fizzy like a glass of bubbly champagne. He closes his eyes, mindless of Derek standing in front of him, and bumps the back of his head against the wall to clear his thoughts. The sound is hollow and hard. When Stiles opens his eyes, Derek is gone and Stiles stands alone in the hallway.

He stares at the photograph of the baby with the Santa hat.

He really wants to know why Derek followed him out of the living room.

Thirty minutes later, when they all sit at the dinner table in the nook of the living room, Stiles and Derek stare each other down across the table so obviously that even the Sheriff feels uncomfortable addressing his son. Then again, the Sheriff also knows that his son is an adult now, and if Stiles had a will of his own as a kid, he certainly has a will of his own as an adult. Parents know when to give up a fight before it begins, and so Sheriff Stilinski takes a bite of Lydia and Kira’s homemade risotto, and lets someone else address the elephant in the room.

Eventually Lydia does.

“Press pause on the internal warfare, guys,” she says with a fork poised delicately in the air above her plate. “We’re all trying to eat, and while I applaud you two trying to maim each other with your eyes, I assure you that laser vision is a thing for superhero movies only.”

“Comics originally,” Liam says. Lydia’s eyelids flutter with a repressed eye roll, but she nods her head in acquiescence.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Malia says quietly to Kira. “Why is Stiles angry?”

“Here. Take some bread with that,” Kira says and hands Malia a slice of bread.

“But-“

“Where’s the butter?” Kira asks and looks around. Scott hands it to her quicker than a pass on the lacrosse field.

Stiles knows that he needs to smooth this over. This one is on him and not Derek, so he can’t expect Derek to smooth it over. Stiles is working up the effort, truly, but it’s a slow process. There is a simmering anger inside him, one that may just as well be a simmering desire, and it’s hurting his pride and making his tongue tie up.

“Can I have a piece of bread, too?” Liam asks nobody in particular, and Malia hands him the breadbasket, while Scott nudges the butter in his direction. With a piece of buttered bread in his own hand, Scott looks around the table. Stiles catches Scott’s eyes over the slice of bread, and Scott gives Stiles an imperceptible blink.

That blink is the push that Stiles needs.

“I told Derek earlier that we should have held this dinner in honor of us having survived the many preternatural horrors of our teenage years,” Stiles says and leans back to balance his chair on two legs. “We’ve never held any survival dinners before, and I personally feel that we’ve survived a great deal of freaky situations that are worthy of a celebration.”

“I couldn’t agree more, kid,” the Sheriff says and grabs the back of Stiles’ chair to push it back onto four legs. “I’ve become an old man before my time because of your Alphas and Kanimas and whatnot.”

“Hey, you remembered Kanima correctly,” Stiles says and twirls his fork twice.

“Sorry,” Scott tells the Sheriff, but the Sheriff waves him off.

“I like to think that it did my career well,” he says with a subtle look towards Malia. She doesn’t catch the look, not outwardly, but Stiles sees the self-conscious lines on her face, when she grabs her glass of water and downs a healthy portion.

The conversation flows easily after that, and Stiles only catches Derek’s eyes a couple of times throughout the rest of the dinner. When you consider how badly he wants to lean across the pots and plates on the table and smooch both skin and stubble off the man’s face, Stiles is rather proud of that accomplishment. Surely, a couple of shared glances shows a huge amount of self-restraint when Stiles really wants to hump the skin clear off Derek’s bones.

While the girls clear off the table and prepare snacks and drinks, Scott pulls Stiles aside.

“What the hell, dude?” he asks Stiles.

“I know,” Stiles says. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“I think we’re talking about your panties here,” Scott says with a grin and a shake of his head. Stiles has to return the grin, but only because Scott just made the best rebuttal of his life so far.

“I don’t know, man,” Stiles says and looks towards the living room. And Derek. “I can’t get ahead of my mind today, and I keep spacing out on people. Derek in particular, of course, because that’s my life and my life sucks ass, as we all know.”

Scott remains calm in the face of Stiles’ exasperation.

“You know he doesn’t mind, right?” Scott asks and searches for something in Stiles’ eyes that Stiles, much to his own surprise and dismay, doesn’t want Scott to find.

“He followed me out of the living room,” Stiles says. “You saw that.”

“You smelled like a marshmallow dipped in caramel and sprinkled with peanuts.”

“What?”

“Delicious. You smelled delicious. Derek was the only one who followed you, because the rest of us knew not to. Do you even understand what you and Derek are doing, dude?”

“A marshmallow dipped in caramel and sprinkled with peanuts smells delicious?” Stiles asks.

Scott looks at him, long and hard, but Stiles is saved from any further interrogation when Kira pops up behind Scott and announces that snacks are ready inside the living room. Scott takes off with Kira, but not without sending Stiles a last look that Stiles really hates him for. He can always count on Scott’s eyes to make him do what he doesn’t want to do, and Scott’s eyes just told him to own up to his shit and talk to Derek.

So now he has to do that.

Because hey, if he doesn’t, he’ll feel guilty for the rest of the year. Scott is Stiles’ conscience, just as Stiles is Scott’s lack of a conscience. They balance each other out.

Derek isn’t inside the living room with the others, but Stiles can hear the water running in the kitchen, so chances are that Derek has filled up his socialization quota for the day, and that he has extracted himself from the group and is doing the dishes on his own.

Oh, well. He will have to face Death sometime in his life. This should be good practice for that day.

“Damn you, Scott,” Stiles says. Then, with a last look towards the living room and his friends, he shuffles into the kitchen with a big smile on his face.

“Derek, my man,” he says and thrusts himself into Derek’s dishwashing line before he even properly looks at the man. He grabs a dishtowel and gets as far as drying off a couple of plates, before he realizes that Derek has stopped scrubbing down anymore plates and that Stiles is now left with an empty drying rack and a damp dishtowel hanging uselessly from one hand.

“So. Derek. Did you like the food?” Stiles asks. He can feel his smile waver, but he will go down with this ship if he has to. “Was it Kira’s own recipe? I think-”

“Put down the dishtowel.”

“Uh. No?”

“Stiles-”

“Look,” Stiles says and puts down the dishtowel. “Scott guilted me into doing this, and I don’t really want to do it, but now I have to, so here it goes. We both know that I had a crush on you some years ago. Now, sexual attraction is part of any healthy crush, and obviously my sexual attraction towards you decided to stay even after my crush on you subsided, so there it is. I am sexually attracted to you, and that is perfectly all right, because I am a healthy male and you are tall, dark and handsome, and I really don’t think I’m at fault for finding you sexy and wanting to bone you.”

When he ends his confession, Derek first looks at him as if he didn’t quite hear any of it. Then he removes his hands from the dirty dishwater and grabs the dishtowel to dry off his wet hands. He doesn’t look at Stiles while he does it. Not directly, anyway. His eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere near Stiles’ shoulder.

“Uh, hello?” Stiles prompts.

“I’m thinking,” Derek says and puts down the dishtowel.

“And I’m apologizing,” Stiles says and fights the urge to clap his hands like an idiot.

“I accept your apology.”

“Great! So, let’s-”

“But don’t apologize to me and then smell like you’re propositioning me at the same time. It confuses my instincts and it’s uncomfortable for me,” Derek says and thus ends with a twist that jostles the floor under Stiles’ feet.

Say what?

Come again?

Huh?

“Well, sorry, but I don’t control my smell. That’s kinda what my entire apology was about,” Stiles says and scratches the side of his nose to busy his hands. “You know, I’m not even a wolf myself, but every discussion I ever have with you guys ends up being about smells, injuries or poops or something equally weird and fucked up that I can’t relate to.”

“Even if you’re not a wolf yourself, you are part of Scott’s pack, and that means your actions translate to other wolves as the actions of a wolf and not a human,” Derek says.

“But I’m acting like a human acts.”

“I didn’t say your actions didn’t translate as weird.”

Stiles stops to think that one over. “I translate as a weird wolf to other wolves, because I act like a human, but I am really a metaphorical wolf because of Scott, so that’s why other wolves think of me as a wolf, even though I act like a human?”

“Stay on track, Stiles,” Derek says, but he also resumes scrubbing down the dishes, so Stiles follows his cue and grabs a hold of the dishtowel. Again. Oh, he can really feel this conversation going places.

“I lost the track,” he says and steps up closer to the drying rack when Derek puts down the first pot for him to dry off.

“Don’t step closer to me!” Derek says and his voice hits Stiles like a whiplash across his neck. In what he will later call petrified shock (or another manlier equivalent of that), Stiles lets go of the pot in his hand. It hits the edge of the counter, and Derek catches it before it topples over onto the floor. When he looks up at Stiles from his bent-over position with the pot in his grip, he has the grace to look sheepish. Inside the living room, voices have stopped, and while an audience normally doesn’t bother Stiles, his nerves are worn raw from today’s ventures, and an audience is about the last thing he can manage right now.

“Oh my God, what the hell was that!” Stiles stage-whispers and only narrowly manages to avoid calling Derek an asshole and a bastard.

“I overreacted. I know,” Derek says and puts the pot down. “I’m sorry.”

“Are we good here?” Stiles asks. “Because I really want to leave this place so far behind right now.”

“I overreacted,” Derek says again. “I’m sorry. Don’t leave because of this, Stiles. That’s childish. You have friends in there that aren’t privy to this.”

“’This’ what, Derek?” Stiles asks and Derek doesn’t answer. “See, that’s the problem I have myself. I don’t know what ‘this’ is. Scott keeps alluding to it, but I don’t get it. In fact he did it again just moments before I walked in here to apologize for my marshmallowy smell. And you’re behaving strangely, too, now that I think about it. Actually, I really think-”

“Marshmallowy?”

“-that Scott is wrong. Nothing can possibly be going on between us, because if it was, I would stop it, before it got one nasty foot down to the ground.”

Something flickers across Derek’s face that kills the next words on Stiles’ tongue.

“You would?” Derek asks.

“Would what?” Stiles asks. He looks around himself, almost as if he can physically feel the room constrict around him, and then back up at Derek.

“You would stop it before anything happened?” Derek asks. Stiles’ shirt collar is itchy against his throat, and Derek’s eyes look particularly green and clear in the lamplight shining down from the ceiling. They look nothing like the eyes of a person who doesn’t know what he’s saying. They tell Stiles that Scott was right, and they also tell him that Stiles’ should trust his gut feeling more often on these matters and not let his brain take the lead. His brain leads him to places like these.

Better to just get ahead of it, Stiles thinks, instead of letting Derek catch him off guard more than he already has.

“You want to jump my bones,” Stiles says and plasters a smile onto his face that he hopes doesn’t look constipated. “You want to jump my bones, too!”

Inside the living room the noises have picked up again, but Stiles knows that if Scott and Liam wanted to, they could easily listen in on the conversation in the kitchen. He hopes that they don’t want to. Or that Scott has told Liam to butt out of it. That’s his minimum requirement.

Before Derek can formulate an appropriate answer to Stiles’ bold claim, Lydia’s pearly laughter rises above the general muted conversation inside the living room, and Stiles looks towards the kitchen entryway in automatic search of the sound. He never quite got over his weird obsession with Lydia, and even nowadays he is still strangely in tune to her.

With his head turned towards the entryway, he doesn’t catch the ripple of aborted movement that runs through Derek, and he also misses the moment when Derek decides that, fuck it, who the hell cares anymore.

“Whoa, dude-”

Stiles words are swallowed by Derek’s mouth. And that is, for the first couple of seconds, the only though that runs through Stiles’ unresponsive brain. Then, when the mouth on top of his start to move and big hands grab Stiles’ lower back, his brain catches up and he manages to think in more coherent terms. Terms like ‘holy fucking shit, this is happening’. By the time that Derek’s hands have traveled from his lower back to his upper ass, Stiles is giving as good as he gets.

And it’s good.

Derek’s mouth is sweet and hot with spices from their dinner, but also bitter with the beer that he drank afterwards. Stiles is absolutely loving it.

He remembers his own arms that are hanging down his sides uselessly, and he maneuvers them around Derek’s shoulders. The change in position breaks their kiss. Stiles can feel a hint of soapy water seep through the back of his shirt where he leans up against the sink, but his entire being is zoned in on Derek in front of him, and the thought only passes his mind like the flicker of a light.

“Shouldn’t I give some sort of consent first?” Stiles asks and wets his lips at the absence of Derek’s mouth.

“You’ve been giving me consent all day,” Derek says and the rasp of his voice tickles Stiles’ spine.

“Then another one of those kisses should work just fine,” Stiles says and that is when the Sheriff enters the kitchen with two beers in his hand.

Yeah.

In retrospect, Derek should have heard or smelled the Sheriff’s approach, but Stiles doesn’t blame him. Well, maybe he blames him a little. His dad has one hell of a pokerface, but Stiles is quite certain that he has never seen this particular look on his dad’s face before.

“Hi, dad,” Stiles says. Derek steps away from Stiles, but he doesn’t try to apologize or deny what they all just saw transpire.

“Well,” the Sheriff begins. “You’re both adults.”

Stiles and Derek wait in silence for the Sheriff to say more.

“And that’s what I have to say,” he ends. He puts down the two beers and leaves the kitchen with a backwards salute. Stiles and Derek share a look. They hear the living room go quiet seconds after the Sheriff’s departure from the kitchen, and Stiles can only guess what’s happening in there.

“So,” Stiles says to Derek, “no more kisses?”

Derek gives him a look that can kill zombies, maybe even giants, but even if the look can kill zombies and giants, there is that little spot of fondness further inside it that makes Stiles smile and grab the dishtowel from the counter.

“Let’s finish the dishes and then you can jump my bones,” he says.

They don’t make it quite that far.

**.end.**


End file.
